They say that realizing something is half the battle. You know, “realizing” you have an alcohol/nicotine/heroine/viagra problem… etc. etc. etc. Then you can go from there, “do something about it.”

Were it only so easy. On any given day, I have at least one realization. On particular days, realizations abound. I actually consider those the good days. The realization, for example, that age is wonderful. That beauty is everywhere, even, perhaps even especially, in the aging process. That’s easy to say in autumn, when all the leaves are blazing triumphantly: “Hey! Did it! Withstood the heat, the rain, the birds, the acrid smog! All of it, dudes, check it out!! Look at me now!!” (Those, of course, being the red leaves. The milder schades, such as yellow are simply softly saying: “Yes, I’ve had a good life. On to becoming humus.”)

Various members of my closer and extended group of family and friends are approaching their personal path to transition. Right now. As I write this. The exact moment is, thankfully, still a mystery we push away and off into the distance. Yet it approaches like the winter you can feel coughing itself up, introducing its arrival in the wind. It’s obviously darker out there these days. And colder acheter viagra en ligne. In the case of my loved ones, there are obvious changes. Without exception, this appears to include getting thinner, frail, translucent, and … sleepy.

There is an element of grace to all of those qualities. They are forced to listen, finally really listen, to internal processes. Forced to go within, even if it means finding where the source of pain is. Modern medicine removes that pain, of course, and we would be appalled if they didn’t. Thankfully, there are other chances to go within, and they do increase with age.

I have been told, over and over and over again the last five or six years that I need to “love myself”, work on my “self worth”, accept “who I am” (the focus here appears to involve body image) … I am a prime example of “self hate” … and on and on. These assessments has come from completely different directions, completely different sources who do not know each other, some who even don’t really “know” me, and others who really, really do (my uncle).

There are two things I can do with this: see it as having ultimately (finally) culminated in one grand realization (a) or see that they are all completely bonkers and I am perfectly okay the way I am (b). The catch here is that at this point in my cognitive progress, it appears they are all telling me to do/become (b). That THAT will mean I am healed and I’ll be walking around like Lady GaGa, a smokin’ trail behind me and my over-obvious self-worth. I happen to have experience with the fact that “self” is way more complicated than it looks and I am in the full realization that I am a finely tuned, highly sensitive antennae picking up signals… if I move too fast, they’re gone. I’m not completely sure that has always been understood. It is obviously not one of those social skills that is a necessary prerequisite for material gain.

When in that rip tide, you have more choices than you think: 1) swim back and die exhausted. 2) Stop, go with the tide, then swim incrementally to either side to get out of it at a diagonal angle to be able to swim back to shore. And the third? Forget the shore. Forget “going” anywhere. Stop swimming and ride the tide. To whereever it may take you. Give it up to grace.